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Category Archives: Home Improvement Projects

A New Vocabulary

04 Apr

One of the main projects besides replacing the roof is moving the stairways to a better location. It is currently in the center of the house and has very steep, narrow steps.

For the past week or two as we refine our plans for the house a new vocabulary has crept into my life. It revolves around the building of stairs.

Who would have thought that there could be so many words that had to do with stairs. There are the usual words like treads or steps.  That I understood, but add stringers, risers, winders, walk line, rise and run, landings, and that is just the beginning. Add to the list newel post, rails, balusters, bullnose, etc.

Tonight we spent our usual evening with our grandson while our daughter attends a college night class. Tonight’s entertainment was the home improvement center where we picked out the supplies we will need to start building the new stairs in the house this week.

Our grandson learned the fine art of picking out the best wood for the project and eagerly helped load it onto the cart. It was a late evening but well worth getting what we needed so we can get right to work on Thursday.

 
9 Comments

Posted by on April 4, 2012 in Architecture, Blogging, Grandparenting, Home Improvement Projects, New Challenges, Photography, Uncategorized, Unfinished Projects

 

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What Would You Choose?

02 Apr

This week is decision time. As you can tell this house needs some help. We will be replacing the shingles, soffit, and fascia. The entire home will be repainted and we will wrap the cement chimney to give it more character.

When I first looked at this home I knew I wanted to do something different with the colors. The starkness of the white with the cedar color is just not very inviting especially when you see the white on the garage as well.

My first choice would be a medium gray with white trim and a black roof. To me it says neat and maybe a little stately. The problem with this choice is that the home just to the left is painted exactly this way. You can see just a bit of it in the photo above.

My second choice would be something green tones with cream trim and dark roof. The only problem with the greens are on either side of the home two doors down in either direction are green homes, different greens. Adding a third green to the mix might just be too much.

My third choice is maintaining the front color of the house and painting the rest of it to match the front color with almond accents and a black roof. It would tie all of the house together and we wouldn’t have to worry about the fascia or soffit fading over time if it were painted almond. I think is would still have a stately look to it.

So many of the homes on Main Street are painted white, light gray or almond that I want to stay away from those colors. There are also two different blue homes in the near vicinity so I don’t think blues are in the running either.

So many choices… so little time. Am I putting way too much thought in to this? We need to pick out colors this week. Open for suggestions.

 
7 Comments

Posted by on April 2, 2012 in "Small Town Living", Architecture, Home Improvement Projects, Life Happens, New Challenges, Photography, Uncategorized, Unfinished Projects

 

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Fools Rush In…

01 Apr

This afternoon after working our “day jobs” my husband and I headed to 309 S. Main Street to continue our work that we must get done before the carpenters come to work on installing the dormer and replacing the roof, etc.

We made a lot of progress in the three short hours we worked. Dean worked on cutting the hole for the new stairway from the second floor down to the first floor.

We started with a clean home…….

At the end of our three hours he had the hole cut for the new stair location. I love when a plan comes together and no one gets hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent the afternoon removing sheet rock and insulation in the other half of the upstairs. The goal is to have the upstairs gutted to the studs and ready for the carpenters as soon as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My favorite part of the afternoon was finding a picture of Queen Elizabeth tacked inside the roof rafters. I would love to know the story behind the picture.

 

 
14 Comments

Posted by on April 1, 2012 in Architecture, Home Improvement Projects, Life Happens, New Challenges, Photography, Uncategorized, Unfinished Projects

 

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309 Chronicles

31 Mar

 

Image

 

Life is an adventure. This our latest. 

We purchased this home on March 20, 2012. Our intention is to fix it up and rent it or sell it. 

As you can see it needs some help. We hope that what we do with it will improve its curb appeal, square footage and the overall flow of the interior.

The great part about this home is the fact that even though it was built in 1947 it was well kept and CLEAN!

 

This past week we have met with the carpenters about replacing the roof, adding a dormer, and changing the roof line on the garage. Everywhere we go we look at homes as we drive by trying to get an idea for a color scheme for the exterior. We are narrowing it down.

This week on Wednesday evening while Dean was at a school board meeting I began demo on the upstairs. We are taking it down to the rafters and studs upstairs. I removed 1960 style paneling from the walls and the insulation. Itchy, itchy, itchy.  The shower felt great when I got home.

Last evening we continued work upstairs. One of the major improvements we are making is moving the interior stairway to the upstairs. It is presently a widow maker. Very steep, narrow stairs. Dean began pulling up floorboards for the location of the new stairway. 

We’re excited about the project and hope that we don’t end up on one of the home improvement shows like “Over Your Head”.  I will be posting more pictures of our project.

 

 

 

 

 

 
14 Comments

Posted by on March 31, 2012 in Architecture, Blogging, Home Improvement Projects, Life Happens, New Challenges, Photography, Uncategorized, Unfinished Projects, Wordpress Blogging

 

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I May Be Coming Around to His Way of Thinking…

02 Jan

After spending most of my treasured day off from work peeling, scraping and scrubbing a border off my kitchen walls to make way for new paint and wallpaper I was reminded of a remark my husband has made often that goes something like “If it weren’t for women, men would be still be hunting for their dinner, cooking it over an open fire and living in a cave.”

I put the border in my kitchen nearly twenty years ago and it definitely needs some updating but after I complete the projects I always start looking at what needs it next. We extensively remodeled and added to our home when we purchased it in 1992. The time has come when many things need updating and I’m thinking a smaller home with less to do sounds pretty good.

Most days of the week we don’t use a third of our home. It has been a great home for raising our four kids but now that they are all moved out the upstairs three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms go unused. A couple of years ago we finished off a family room in the basement which doesn’t get used either. We planned well, looking forward to our empty nest years, by placing everything we would need on the first floor but having all the extra space to heat, cool and clean leaves me thinking a lot about how it could be better used.

That one room cave is sounding pretty cozy with an open campfire and no walls to scrub.

 
11 Comments

Posted by on January 2, 2012 in Home Improvement Projects

 

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Wrestling Bathtubs and Other Remodeling Moves

07 Oct

Tonight my husband and I went to help our oldest son with his latest home improvement project. He is finishing his basement into a family room, bedroom and bathroom. We are helping with the bedroom and bathroom.

On our way to his home we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some sheet rock, 2 X 4′s and a bathtub/shower combination for his bathroom. We managed to get in all in the pickup truck and secured for the last half hour to his home. He doesn’t own a pick up truck so we have hauled whatever he can’t fit in his Impala with the seats folded down. I’m amazed at what he can fit in his car.

After arriving at his home we unloaded the truck and decided it was time to tackle carrying the bathtub into the house. His home is a split level entry so we went in the front door and started down the steps to the basement. My husband was at the bottom and my son and I at the top.

We made it through the front door with the beast but soon realized that we would have to change our plan of attack so it was back outside to turn the tub a different way and then back inside to try it again. We had to lift it high over the railing and head down the stairs.

We got to the bottom and got stuck. Back up the stairs to remove the hand railing to give us more room. Did I mention that the tub was made of fiber glass and by now we were itchy and had cuts on our hands from the fiber glass? Not fun.

Before we could remove the hand railing we set the tub down on the stairs only to wedge my son’s foot into a spot under the tub that we were having difficulty removing it from. He felt a little claustrophobic. We got it out and the railing off.

Back down the stairs with the tub. At the bottom of the stairs we needed to turn the tub 45 degrees to the left. Not enough room so we had to remove the packing feet from the tub. Still not enough room. My husband had to remove two studs from the wall at the bottom of the steps and the sheet rock from those spaces to negotiate the turn. We thought we were done with demolition last weekend.

After tonight we are taking tomorrow off from home improvement to take Dad’s sailboat out of the lake for the season. There may be large quantities of wine involved after tonight’s wrestling match. Then it will be back at home improvement on Saturday and Sunday. I hope we survive and his home.

 
22 Comments

Posted by on October 7, 2011 in Family, Home Improvement Projects, Humor, Life Happens, New Challenges, Unfinished Projects

 

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My Campaign for the Return of the Outhouse and Saturday Night Baths

18 Dec

It’s Friday night and I’m exhausted.  Not from an exciting date night but from cleaning the three bathrooms in our home.  When we were building our home in 1993  we were remodeling a portion of the old cabin and adding on new space.  When we moved the existing stairway in the cabin we were left with more space upstairs that could be used for a storage closet. 

We started thinking ahead to the future when our four children would all be teenagers.  We opted for a second bathroom upstairs instead of a storage closet and one bathroom on the first floor.  What was I thinking?  I hate cleaning bathrooms.

I’m ready to lock the bathroom doors and declare them closed for business.  I want to build an outhouse in the backyard. 

Just think no more hairspray to clean off of just about every surface in the bathroom. No more toothpaste on the counters,  multiple bottles of care products from one end of the counter to the other and mirrors to clean. 

The best part of all would be no toilets or shower stalls to scrub.  If we returned to the use of outhouses, the time spent in the bathroom would be cut in half especially in the cold Minnesota winters. 

To complement my new outhouse I would install one of those old-fashioned claw foot tubs for Saturday Night baths.  It would cut in half or more the number of towels that would need to be washed and there would be only one of them to clean instead of three shower and tub combinations. 

One of the disadvantages of our bath/shower stalls is that the bathtub is not deep enough.  There is always one part or more of the body that is out of the water .  I’d like to soak up to my neck in the tub.  I think that our electric bill and propane use would go down significantly if we changed to Saturday night only baths and the quality of baths would improve.

 
9 Comments

Posted by on December 18, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects, My View

 

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The Pioneer Spirit of Creativity

30 Nov

 Jodee Luna asked me to be a feature writer at her blog http://refrainfromtheidentical.com on creativity.  This is the post I wrote for her blog.  I decided to post it here as well.

 
 

Private Pilot April 17, 2010

There are days when I feel that I was born in the wrong time period.  A true pioneer spirit imagines the possibilities that are attainable by using what you have in new and different ways.  It doesn’t need the latest gadget or craft kit to get the desired effect. 

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Little House on the Prairie.  I realize that the show glamorized what life was like back then but the adventurous nature of those settlers that ventured out into unknown territory and used what they had to create what they needed inspires me.

My husband and I are modern day pioneers.  We like to take what we have and imagine what it could be.  In 1992 we bought a lake property near our existing home and business.  This is what it looked like when we bought it. 

People thought we were crazy when we decided to dig a foundation and have a crane lift a portion of the existing home onto the new foundation and add on to it.  We spent hours drawing our own plans and figuring out the cost of the project. The old part of the house that we were saving had no historical value but to us it was the work of a friend who built it.  Somehow we wanted to save it in our project.  The crane enabled it to happen.  This is what it looks like now. 

 

We attended an auction at a local lumberyard and bought up many supplies for our home.  We decided on color schemes, window trim, exterior finishes and windows based on what we could find and use from the auction.  We designed and built the entrance to our home.  The carpenters that helped install it just shook their heads wondering why we didn’t just make our entrance like everyone else.  We wanted something unique.

Whenever I am faced with a challenge I get creative.  A couple of years ago I wanted a headboard for our bed.  My husband didn’t want to buy a new bed because he loves our 1970’s vintage waterbed with the old big wide pine board frame.  It originally came with a bookcase headboard that I hated and the bed was just too big for our room.  By cutting off the frame of the bed that the headboard sat on I gained nearly a foot at the end of our bed to walk around.  I loved more space but wanted a headboard.  I combined my creativity and love of quilting for my own one of a kind headboard.  I painted the quilt pattern directly on my wall.

 

My latest venture in creativity is writing my blog.  Writing is not my forte and it takes work on my part to do it better each time I write.   I love taking the photos to include with each blog.  For now I take my photos with an affordable digital Nikon that was purchased for $120.00.  It allows me to take some good pictures but I want to learn how to do more which will require me to purchase a camera that can do so much more.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of my favorites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Sunday Night Blues

  My pioneer spirit kicked in today thinking about the new and better camera that I would like to purchase.  It was time to get creative and find a way to purchase my new camera without having to buy it on credit.  I boxed up my flight simulator and software that my husband bought for me a couple of years ago during my flight training and put it on EBay.  I took photos of the flight simulator, wrote up the description and listed it for sale.  Five days from now I will be that much closer to my new camera. 

So many people limit their creativity, thinking it can only be achieved if you have enough time and money.  The key to creativity is work.  Trying things in new and different ways until you achieve something you like.  It’s not about whether other people like what you do but how it makes you feel.

 

 
7 Comments

Posted by on November 30, 2010 in Blogging, Home Improvement Projects, Inspiration, New Challenges, Quilting, Wordpress blogging, Writing skills

 

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And For Our Thursday Night’s Entertainment…Furnaces 101,201,301…

21 Nov

Furnaces 101 – When you turn up the temperature on the thermostat and the temperature doesn’t rise or the furnace doesn’t stay running further investigation is required.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a home that wasn’t quite warm enough.  It felt colder than usual.  We have a set back thermostat on our furnace to save energy.  We turned up the temperature but the furnace did not stay running.  It would start, then stop and we would start it again but it would not stay running.

In Minnesota in the fall, winter and spring a furnace is a necessity.  We fortunately have a small back up propane stove in our four season porch off our livingroom that will give enough heat to keep our pipes from freezing.  We turned the furnace on and realized it would not be  reliable until we figured out the problem. 

Furnaces 201-When you know you have a problem and you think you know what it is, it helps to get a second opinion to know you are on the right track.

My husband did some investigating and diagnosed what he thought was the problem.  Then he called the heating and cooling guy that installed our furnace and air conditioner 1993.  Our furnace was  nearly eighteen years old.  Somewhere in my husband’s brain he had filed the information that our high-efficiency furnace would only last 15 years and we were past that.  My husband and the heating and cooling guy talked but it didn’t look good for our furnace or pocketbook. 

They talked for a little while longer and decided that my husband should clean the thermo coupler and the repairman would stop by and have a look at the furnace while my husband was home.  My husband cleaned the part with some sandpaper and that seemed to take care of one of the problems, the starting and not staying running part.  They both had concerns about the heat exchanger in the furnace.  If it had a hole in it as they thought it could leak carbon monoxide into our home.  He told us not to use the furnace until the heat exchanger could be looked at for holes.  They ordered a new heat exchanger for the furnace not before we spent the entire day weighing our options for our furnace.

Furnaces 301 – Time to get out the checkbook and settle in for a long evening’s work.

We needed to decide just how much money we wanted to spend.  We could replace the old furnace with a new furnace to the tune of about $2200.00 plus labor to install it.  We could switch to a new type of furnace that would have an air to air heat pump.  The cost of that unit could be in the range of $7500 minus some tax credits we would receive.  The last option was to replace the bad heat exchanger.  It would be a few hours work and it was a $1200 part plus labor. 

Our furnace guy told us he thought we could get the heat exchanger replaced under warranty.  That part should last 20 years.  We opted for replacing the heat exchanger.  We paid the $1200.oo to order the part and when we return the old heat exchanger to the company we will get our money returned.  Our repair costs will just be the labor to install it or it will be free if we  do it ourselves.

Furnace with all the wires labeled with blue masking tape.

Our new heat exchanger arrived on Thursday afternoon. We took it home from our shop and started to tackle the project around 7:30pm.  As we disconnected each wire we labeled them.  We tried to keep track of the order of removal from the furnace so we could put things back together correctly.  I told my husband afterward that we should have taken some digital pictures as we taking things apart so we would remember how they went back together.  Basically all that was left in of our furnace was its shell with the air conditioning stuff on top of the case.

Three hours later my husband was bolting the cover back on the furnace and starting it up.  It works great and our house has the new house smell as the furnace runs.  Now for returning the heat exchanger.  At first we weren’t sure that there was anything wrong with it, we couldn’t find any holes until we turned it over and examined the other side.  We found three holes in the exchanger, one large hole and two smaller holes.  The exchanger was definitely bad.

Hole in the Heat Exchanger

It wasn’t the most romantic evening in the world but we spent it together in the close quarters of our furnace room doing the thing we like to do best, save money.

Back in Business...Yeah!

 
6 Comments

Posted by on November 21, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects, Life Happens, New Challenges, Uncategorized

 

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My Load is Lighter…over 400 magazines to be exact

07 Oct

I love magazines.  I love to read them cover to cover.  Some of my favorites are home improvement magazines, cooking magazines, and especially flying magazines.  I love to keep them and go back and look at the pictures for various home improvement projects that I thought some day I would like to do.  The problem was getting out of hand.  I bought those handy storage containers for storing magazines.  I thought if they were kept neatly it was okay to keep them all.  They were taking up space in closets and shelves in just about every room in my house and some in the attic and garage.

One of the websites I frequent often is a home management system called FLYlady.net.  Each month she has a goal to work on in your home to make it a more enjoyable place to live.  This month the goal is to get rid of paper clutter.  She says living in clutter robs you of your peace. 

One reference she made when she made this statement was that we all love to stay in a nice clean motel/hotel.  What is it about it that we like?  It is the fact that it is uncluttered.  That’s what I want in my home.  Uncluttered and peaceful.  I am not a hoarder like the new TV reality shows but I do have areas in my home that have been taken over by my magazines and fabric that I use for sewing. 

Tuesday morning my grandson Jack and I loaded up the truck of my car and drove to the local recycling center and dropped them off.  Oh how I was tempted when I saw the cover of several magazines and wanted to keep just this one copy or maybe two as I was putting them into the recycling bin.

Then I found myself looking at what others had put in for recycling and realized that their magazines were different from the ones I was bringing and started to pick them up and read.  I put them back and thought of my goal of a clean, peaceful, and uncluttered home.  Bringing magazines home with me did not fit into my goal.  It’s a good thing I had Jack to keep me moving. 

The next thing on my list as far as paper clutter is all of my household records.  I love office supplies so I have found ways to keep just about everything paper for our household.  If I go in my attic I could find a box that contains receipts for what I paid for fuel oil for our first home.  We haven’t lived there since 1992.  It would be interesting trivia to read but I don’t think I need them anymore. 

My goal is to work on paring down all this paper for 15 minutes a day.  That I can handle.  I’ve already begun to tackle the mail each day as it comes into the home.  I stand next to the paper shredder, recycling and trash and sort immediately.  With four adults in our home we get a lot of mail. 

I’m feeling better already about my home and the spaces that I have cleared of clutter.  Sorry Tyler that the magazines had to go,  I know your love of magazines,  but the peace is worth it.  I will always read magazines just not keep them as long as I have in the past and pass them along to others to share.

I’ll let you know of my progress at the end of the month.

 My new idea of an uncluttered, calm, and peaceful life!

 
4 Comments

Posted by on October 7, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects, Inspiration, New Challenges, Uncategorized, Unfinished Projects

 

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